At Health Cost Matters, we believe an informed consumer is a prudent consumer. Two of our many mantras are: ‘Know ahead what your procedure will cost’ and ‘Compare costs because provider prices vary widely’. Not the catchiest of mantras, but after spending decades auditing claims for insurance companies I’ve seen how common it is for simple lab, radiology or outpatient procedures to vary by as much as 60-fold and even more between hospitals and free-standing providers in the same zip code.

Stephan’s daughter rode her bicycle to work last summer and suffered a minor accident which resulted in a gash by her eyebrow. Later that afternoon Stephan took his daughter to a nearby hospital ER for stitches. The on-call plastic surgeon treated her. Thirty minutes later, the gash was repaired, his daughter returned home.

The billing, coding and reimbursement system in the US is based upon a maze of complex codes, numbers, terminology and rules. The end result is that patients pay out of pocket more than they should, and this happens more often than you can imagine.